With the shop and materials for upholstery work coming together I ran out of room for stalling on what material to use. Time to make some decisions and place an order.
The first big question was leather or vinyl? Leather is the leader for luxury – and is by far the most expensive option. Vinyl is good, widely used, and can be relatively inexpensive. The deciding factor was that I’m going to be making mistakes. I expect to make and re-make things several times while learning how to do this upholstery thing. It would drive me nuts to destroy or waste several hundreds of dollars of leather! So, vinyl it is.
I couldn’t find a local place stocking automotive fabrics, so it was on to the Internet to find out what was available online. Searching quickly turned up several suppliers. Your Auto Trim Store seemed to have what I was looking for, so I ordered several sample kits for different types and colors of automotive vinyl fabric as well as samples of foam backing.
With a sample kit you can see and feel the actual fabric you will be using. Going through the sample kits I decided that I liked the texture and feel of SoftSeat brand automotive vinyl. SoftSeat is available in both solid and perforated, allowing you to build more comfortable seats. Softseat also had a good match for the factory interior color.
I (of course) had trouble deciding what color to choose. A black car with black interior is classic. A black car with white interior is really sharp – and a stain magnet. Red? Kind of dramatic, but works with black. Rose is a bit more subtle but could look really rich. Gray? I like gray, so this could work. Hmm, some shades of blue work well with black; maybe teal or turquoise? Or maybe go with something really dramatic, like screaming banana yellow!
After enjoying prolonged indecision I finally decided to go with the factory color – a sort of cream. The existing seats had been re-upholstered at some point were a completely different color, but the door cards were still the factory color. Well, a dirty 60 year old version of the factory color… Further, the headliner was close to the factory color. Also, the dash is brown. Changing the color of the dash and the plastic dash pad would be a major project.
With the SoftSeat sample ring in the car I determined that SoftSeat Light Cashmere was a good match for the factory color. The plan was to use solid for most of the seats with perforated inserts where you will be sitting. I find that having contrasting inserts in seats provides a richer appearance, so I decided to also order SoftSeat Medium Prairie Tan for the inserts.
With colors chosen the next question was quantity. Automotive Vinyl is typically around 54″ wide and is ordered by the yard. I did a rough calculation of how much material each part of the seats, door panels, and trim would require, allowed plenty of allowance for cutting the pieces out of the roll of fabric, and then added another 25% for safety and mistakes.
To give myself flexibility I planned on getting enough Light Cashmere to do everything plus enough Medium Prairie Tan to do the inserts.
At this point She Who Must Be Obeyed pointed out the importance of getting everything you need at the same time. If you don’t have enough fabric and have to order more, there is a good chance the new order will be from a different dye batch and the colors won’t match. OK, add another 25% or so to the order. Realistically I probably have enough vinyl to do two complete cars.
It turns out that ordering automotive vinyl online is much cheaper than I expected. The SoftSeat vinyl is under $14 a yard for solid and under $19 a yard for perforated! The initial order I put together was under $600; going in I expected materials to cost over $2,000! Hmm, at this price might as well add another yard or two of each vinyl…
In addition to the vinyl I also needed foam: 1/4″ fabric backed foam for most of the trim work, 1/4″ or 1/2″ fabric backed foam for seat backing, and 1″ or 2″ high density foam for seat cushions. The same online store carried foam so I went ahead and ordered everything I needed.
Even after adding more vinyl and adding the foam the order was under $800. The order was placed and the materials have arrived. I’m now committed!